


your hands are cold, your hands are warm

by thefudge



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, F/M, Hands, Kastle Christmas Secret Santa Gift Exchange, Seasons, Summer/Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 15:26:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13126518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefudge/pseuds/thefudge
Summary: My entry in the Kastle Secret Santa Gift Exchange for "eklixio" on tumblr.





	your hands are cold, your hands are warm

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoy it! Happy holidays!

There are only stars out tonight, no moon. She sits on the window sill with her legs carelessly dangling over the edge, fanning herself with a newspaper. July heat is sticky and damp. She’s got a camisole on and little else. Her skin does not fare well in summer. It grows splotchy red, it makes her look like a too ripe peach.

There’s also nothing to do in the summer, no momentum, no purpose. She feels adrift in this tiny apartment, typing words into a document that very few will actually read. Fighting the good fight is long and arduous and thankless.

Sure, it’d be nice to walk on rooftops and just unleash violence on the city, like some of her vigilante friends do.

But she is confined to her non-violent means. She must wait and write and hope for better things. She must be the lighthouse amidst raging storms. That’s how her editor put it anyway. 

Karen senses his presence before he even lands on the fire escape. She’s gotten better at this. She can smell him. It’s not the gun oil that tips her off. It’s the scent of his soap.

He straightens his back and brushes his knee. His eyes glaze over one of her bare legs, snap back towards the city. His jaw clicks.

Karen tilts her head to catch his profile. “Hello, stranger.”

“Shouldn’t be sitting like that,” he mutters, leaning against the railing. “Accidents happen.”

“July heat might kill me first,” she says, staring at the heavy artillery on his body. “How can you breathe in that?”

But as he comes closer, still keeping his eyes trained on the block, she feels a delicious cool shiver run down her skin.

She lifts her hand listlessly. “Come here.”

He considers her with a strange mixture of disapproval and yearning. He takes a step towards her.

She stares at the gun strapped to the inside of his body. She wants to ask him if it’s warm.

Instead, she says, “Give me your hand.”

“What are you on –”

“Just please, Frank.”

And can you deny her anything when she “ _just please_ ”-s you?

He is a shy boy for a few precious moments, hesitating, clenching his fist, releasing it, and finally, offering his palm. His hand is huge, dwarfing hers. A gentle bear’s paw.

She takes it gingerly, as if it were precious, and she lets it fall on the bridge of her shoulder, between throat and collarbone. Where her pulse keeps a steady beat.

She _knew_ his skin would be cool. She just knew it.

She sighs happily, half-closing her eyes.  His fingers twitch against her hot skin, thumb grazing the hollow of her throat.

“Mm, that’s good,” she murmurs.

Frank bites his tongue. “I’m your AC, is that it?”

Karen’s lips are plump and flush with heat. She almost giggles at the thought of it. Frank Castle – personal air conditioner. But she keeps quiet, because this moment can’t last long and she needs to soak it up.

His fingers thrum and hunger, but they stay where she put them, relishing the impossible softness, the peach-ripeness of her sunburnt skin.

She would like to be fully naked and let him run his hand all over. But they’re not there yet. Baby steps.

This touch, so far, is the closest they’ve ever gone.

This touch – he’ll feel guilty about it afterwards. He’ll lie down in his bed and curse himself and want to cut off his fingers. And put them in his mouth.

He removes his hand from the side of her neck.

Karen makes a disappointed sound but she smiles as she opens her eyes. “Do you want a beer?”

The cold bottle feels different from his hand as she gives it to him.

Frank drinks fast and quick.

 

 

There’s only a white moon out tonight, no stars. It has stopped snowing and the grey mounds have piled up on the sidewalk. She sits on the window sill, staring at the slush, cradling a hot cup of tea. She shivers in her thick sweater.

There’s something wrong with the central heating. The radiators churn and groan and release only a whiff of heat. She’s called the repairman but little can be done until Monday. Especially now with the holidays.

She leans her cool forehead against the even cooler window pane. She misses that hot July weather. She misses the past, merely because it is the past and it is known. The future – _God_ , who knows about the future? She hopes Frank is taking care of himself tonight, staying out of trouble.

It’s Christmas, after all.

She doesn’t expect him to visit. Doesn’t expect to see a figure on the fire escape.

She goes to bed feeling nostalgic for something she’s never had. She buries herself in blankets and quilts to store the heat next to her body. She feels like a bird in hibernation. She misses her bear.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, she finds him.

She thinks it’s a dream. It must be. His hand burns softly, injects her with delirious warmth. He slides his fingers across her shoulder, nestling them in the crook of her neck. She cradles his hand, kisses his scarred knuckles. 

She expects to open her eyes and wake up to nothing, but when she turns around, he is _there_. Lying above the quilts and blankets, staring at her with a pair of stony, yearning eyes.

“Merry Christmas, Frank,” she says softly, afraid to break this moment into pieces, afraid it might not be real, after all.

His thumb caresses her cheek. He smiles like a boy. “Merry Christmas, Karen.”

She remains still. She doesn’t reach out any further for him. She knows she must give him his space, must allow him to enter this intimacy on his own terms. He remains still too, with his hand on her throat and cheek.

They lie like that, warm and afraid and elated, nostalgic for something they never had.

 

 


End file.
